


Those that move

by hippocrates460



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: And also dancing, Fun kinds!, Getting Together, Multi, Sex under the influence of Veritaserum, becoming a triad, there's sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:07:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21944092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hippocrates460/pseuds/hippocrates460
Summary: Based on the prompt "Hermione wants to make Ron's dream come true, a date and night together with Viktor Krum. But what happens when they all don't want it to be just this one time?""All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move." - Benjamin Franklin.How Ron and Hermione decide to figure out what they really want, how they come to realize that it is Viktor, and how all of them choose to move.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger/Viktor Krum, Hermione Granger/Viktor Krum/Ron Weasley, Viktor Krum/Ron Weasley
Comments: 52
Kudos: 151
Collections: HP Triad!Fest





	Those that move

**Author's Note:**

> With much love to my best *redacted for anonymity*, I love you.

It is at Percy’s wedding that Ron suddenly leans in to Hermione and whispers, as low as he can (which of course is not very low): “Do you think we’re doing this right?”

“What do you mean?” she whispers back.

“Well, our relationship,” he says, “we’re not like other couples are we?”

Hermione looks around, sees Percy and Audrey trying to explore each other’s insides with their tongues, sees Harry and Ginny play with the baby while James is fast asleep in Ginny’s arms. Even Molly and Arthur are clinging to each other. 

“I see what you mean,” Hermione offers.

“Should we be?” asks Ron, and that’s an excellent question. She looks up at him. He looks serious and determined.

“Let’s find out,” she decides, and they share a grin. 

Ron always needs an hour or two to lie down somewhere very quiet after spending time with his family, so when they get home the next day, Hermione takes the Floo straight on to the public library at Diagon Alley. She browses around for a long time, until her stomach starts to protest its neglect, and checks out a whole pile of books.

When she gets home with her stack, Ron is asleep on the sofa. She makes herself something to eat and gets to work.

Hours later, Ron wakes up and starts blearily moving around their apartment, like he’s reacquainting himself with the space, then disappears for a quick shower. “Hello,” he says, when he’s back in the sitting room. Hermione picks at her hair, a habit left over from before she shaved all of it off. It’s never much longer than half an inch these days and it has done very much for her relationship with her body, but it hasn’t changed how she fidgets. 

“Hello,” she answers, with a finger marking where she is on the page so she can look up at Ron. “I’ve got some books.”

“I can see that,” he answers, “I’ll start dinner, yeah?”

Ron’s not much for reading and he’s not very good at it either, but he cooks well and after they’ve eaten they sit around the books Hermione’s brought back from the library together. “So,” Hermione starts. “I’m not sure how to address this.”

Ron gets some parchment and a quill, dips it in ink. “How about we start with the question?” He offers. Then he writes: _Should we be like other couples?_ “Of course to answer this,” he says, looking up at her, “we’ll need to find out what other couples are like.”

“What is normal,” Hermione mutters, more to herself, but she sees Ron write it down. “Marriage?” She offers. They both look at each other and wrinkle their noses. They’ve had this conversation, a day at the Burrow is enough, the planning of a wedding with everything that involves? No thanks. They’ve told everyone of course that it’s because Hermione doesn’t want to, because her parents are divorced. It’s not _not_ true. Or, it’s not the only thing that _is_ true.

“Babies,” Ron adds, writing it under marriage. They don’t even need to look at each other to know they’re still on the same page with that. 

“Living together,” they already do that. “Sharing a bed,” they do that too, most of the time.

“Sex,” says Ron. Hermione nods. Couples have sex. 

Over the next few weeks they work their way through the books, with Hermione telling Ron what she’s read, or what she thinks about it, and Ron taking notes. “You know,” he says one night, when the research has taken over their dining table so thoroughly that they’re having dinner on the floor in front of the sofa. “I don’t think we’re going to get anything else from the books.”

It’s a bit blasphemous but it does make sense. It’s been a while since Hermione saw something very new in one of the books she’s been going through.

“Alright,” she admits. “What’s next then?”

“I’ve been thinking,” Ron takes a sip from his wine and leans back against the sofa, jerks up when his weight makes it move. “Sorry. I’ve been thinking we would have to classify these things somehow.”

“Rate them for how we’re doing?” Hermione asks, and she likes the idea, she can see it already. Marriage, no. Supporting each other during hard times, yes.

“Well no,” Ron admits, “because then we’d have to classify them on importance too. Surely babies and talking about finances have a different sort of importance?”

True. And how would you begin to describe that importance? He’s right. “You’re right.”

“So I was thinking instead we could try to follow this one,” he taps on a purple book, where ugly golden letters spell out How to Love Well - Steps to Improve Your Intimate Relationships. “That way,” he explains, “we get to both work on conflict resolution if something comes up, and we get to find out if we’d be happier with a different status quo.”

“Go on,” Hermione urges, having some more of her own wine. Conflict resolution is a big topic in many of the books. 

“And this one,” Ron taps another book, “says we should work on one thing at a time anyway. We could pick a case study of a sorts.”

“Like what?” Hermione looks at the list again. She’s not going to try babies, it seems exhausting and unethical. They already agree on so many of the things on the list.

“Well the conflicts most couples seem to have from what you tell me,” Ron holds out his list as if Hermione hasn’t already memorised it. “Are about finances, household chores, or sex.” They keep their finances separate except for the apartment and everything they share, and they make about the same amount of money, so Hermione hopes they don’t pick that. It’d be utterly boring. “I was thinking we could start with sex.” _Thank god_. Chores would definitely be worse than finances.

“Ok,” says Hermione. “We could follow the Shepherd guidelines for that?”

“Yes,” Ron agrees. “That’s the red book right?” It is.

This is how they find themselves on a Saturday afternoon, facing each other in the bedroom. Hermione is sitting in the chair they normally keep their clothes on. Not today, because the environment is supposed to be ’neat and restful’. Ron is sitting on the bed, sort of half-hard. They’re both completely naked.

“Do you want to start with the massage?” Ron asks, and Hermione nods. She lets him lie down, on his front, and uses the oil they bought specifically for this purpose to work her way down from Ron’s neck to his feet. She’s seen the diagrams, knows how it’s supposed to work, but finds herself a little fascinated with his skin. The freckles, of course, but also the way he breaks out in goosebumps when she accidentally uses her nails. When he turns over he’s still not actually hard, but definitely plump, his penis falling to the side in a lazy way. She massages all the way down his front, a bit faster now because her hands are getting tired. It’s hard work, this massaging business. 

Then it’s her turn. She’s used Patil’s Patented Pain-Free Hair-Removal Potion in preparation, because she hates having her hair pulled, especially around her vulva, and it would definitely distract her. Now she doesn’t think about much at all. Ron’s hands are warm and large, as always, and he is careful with her. It feels nice. She understands why he had goosebumps when he accidentally scrapes her back a bit. She’s more sensitive all over than she normally is. When she’s on her back and can watch him, he has such an earnest expression of concentration on his face that she wants to pull him in for a kiss. But they’re not there yet. 

By the time they’re done massaging, they get under the covers together. She feels slow and heavy, and Ron kisses her nose. “I don’t mind,” he promises.

It’s a restful nap, she’s got to admit that. But they don’t end up having sex that day at all, and it doesn’t change much about their relationship.

The next Wednesday Ron asks her if she’s ok with him trying something, for their second attempt. “It’s not exactly according to the book,” he says, as he’s buttoning up his Auror’s robes.

“I trust you,” she answers.

When they’re sitting in the bedroom again though (a nice lit candle on the dresses, no stray clothes, nothing they’ll need to rush to get to on the agenda) and he pulls out a tiny little vial of what could only be Veritaserum, she has to swallow once or twice.

“Why?”

“Well,” he says, because of course he’s thought about it, “you read out that passage with the getting to know yourself bit. From that Muggle book you found.” Hermione remembers that too, something about not knowing your own desires and needing to understand yourself before you can communicate about it. “I figured this might help. If we take a low dosage, every hour or so, that should keep us honest but not incoherent for the rest of the afternoon. Of course,” he adds, “we’ll have to try not to fight it.”

Hermione’s had Veritaserum before, for work, but never such a low dosage. She feels it, her mind is a bit sharper, her limbs are a bit looser, but she doesn’t have to work not to drool. Ron looks to be experiencing the same things.

“I want to be in the bed,” he says. “Naked.” So they undress and get under the covers. She rests her head against his shoulder, and grabs his hand.

“Should be a few minutes until it works all the way,” she warns, and Ron shrugs a little, careful with her. “Do you want to have sex like this? Probably should have talked about that before.” It’s harder to hold her tongue, harder to think before she speaks.

“Yes,” Ron says, “to both. I trust you.” She trusts him too. “I prepared questions. Should have gone through them together before.”

“No,” Hermione decides. “I would have had an answer at the front of my mind already, it’s better like this. Ask your questions.”

Ron has to lean over to get a crumpled note from the pocket of his discarded trousers (the room shouldn’t be cluttered but it is now that their clothes are on the floor and Hermione honestly doesn’t mind). She has to hold herself up, and when Ron sits up again, they face each other, cross-legged. “Do you,” he reads out, “like to have sex with me?”

“Yes,” she says, and then for completeness and because she couldn’t stop herself if she tried, she adds: “We don’t have sex very often, I think, but when we do I like it. Better than before you, anyway. You never make me feel bad.”

“Who made you feel bad?” Ron frowns up at her. She shrugs, too many to name. People at school, people in the street, people calling her dirty, or strange, or just unattractive.

“Almost everyone. Viktor tried but he was so scared to hurt me it just made it more uncomfortable. How about you?”

“I like sex with you,” Ron tells her. “But I worry that I don’t like it enough. People are always talking about it, and most of the time I’d be happier kissing.”

“Even when we’re having sex?” 

“Yeah,” he answers, cheeks flaming. Hermione understands the need for Veritaserum now. He looks surprised by his own admission, ducks his head. “I would like to talk about something else,” he whispers, and she nods. That’s alright.

He looks at his little paper, hums a little no or yes, then hands it to her, his finger on one of the questions and a question on his face too. "What is your favourite place to be touched?” she reads.

“My chest,” he says, and as he says it his penis twitches. “It feels so nice, when you’re gentle but also when you’re not.”

She picks up one of her hands to place it against his chest. He’s not so skinny as he used to be, stronger from the training, but still thin. She hasn’t been thin since the war, but she doesn’t mind at all. She touches him with just her fingertips, tracing little patterns, and his penis fills out properly. When she touches his nipple he shivers, so she keeps going a while longer. 

“What about you?” He asks, quietly, like they’re doing something sacred.

“Not anywhere specifically,” she says, “depends on the time. There’s parts that I only want touched during sex, and parts that are nice when we’re just having a cuddle, and some that are ok in public.”

“Can you give an example of each category?” Ron asks, still full of reverence, “and is there somewhere you don’t like to be touched at all?”

“My hair,” she says, “but you knew that. It’s ok now it’s very short but it doesn’t make me feel good.” She has to think on the rest. “My arms are ok in public, a kiss would be ok, but not a long one. During a cuddle almost everywhere, like my neck or my back or my stomach. And my vulva only during sex.”

Ron only hums, so she helps him lie down, plays with his chest endlessly, until she’s tired and her wrist hurts, then she pets his hair a little until he blinks his eyes open. His face is very flushed. “Tired?” He offers, and she nods. He rolls onto his stomach and moves her legs around until he’s between them. “We missed the next dose, didn’t we?” He asks, kissing her thighs to get her skin used to the touch.

“We did,” by quite a lot. It doesn’t matter much, when he starts licking her labia, not insistent, just warm and wet. She reshuffles the pillows behind her and then lets him continue. 

When she’s come and is wrapped up in his arms, both of them warm and soft together, she thinks about the conversation they just had.

“Did you like that?” She asks, and he humms yes. “We can do this again, if you’d like.”

They do, almost exactly a week later. Hermione had a trip to the British Museum with her dad planned on Saturday, so Sunday finds them in the bedroom. 

“You sure you don’t want to look at the questions beforehand?” Ron asks, and Hermione shakes no. She’s on the bed this time, and he is in the chair. They take their drop of Veritaserum and Ron puts the phial away again. 

Pulls out his list. “Wait,” Hermione interrupts, “let me use the bathroom.” She goes next door to use the bathroom, and when she’s back in the bedroom it’s been a few minutes and she can really feel it. The buzzing of it under her skin. The focus.

“What’s your favourite fantasy?” Ron asks, when she’s standing in the middle of the room looking at him, wondering whether she should sit down or get under the covers. “Something you think about when you’re alone.”

She flushes all the way red immediately. “You watching me,” she says. “Alone, or with someone else.”

“Really?” Ron blurts out, and she wouldn’t blame him if she could. It’s a strange thing to say. 

“Yes,” the Veritaserum forces her to say. “Most of the time when I masturbate it’s right here in the bed. I use my hands and I think about you sitting where you are right now, about someone else coming in. About what they’d do to me and how you’d be seeing it all.”

“Someone specific?”

“Sometimes,” she says. “It’s a faceless nameless person. Because it’s about the two of us.”

“And other times?” Ron urges. She is so wet she thinks she might start dripping, squirms where she stands. 

“And other times it’s Professor Lupin, or - or that clerk, from the supermarket around the corner,” she says, unable to stop. Not wanting to - either. “Then it isn’t about the two of us. It’s about them too. But it’s not - not gentle.”

She’s still standing in between the chair and the bed, staring at Ron’s red face. She knows her face is showing her embarrassment at the conversation they’re having too. Her breathing is rapid and shallow, from arousal as much as from fear. “What about you?” She whispers.

“I - I think of.” He’s even more flushed, shifts with his discomfort, bits his lip.

“Do you prefer not to say?” Hermione asks him, because she knows he won’t be able to resist the urge to answer the question and she’d rather not know if he really doesn’t want to talk about it.

“I do want to tell you,” he says, big earnest eyes. She steps a little closer and feels a hand on her thigh. Notices only now how hard Ron is. “I think of - you know.” He swallows, of course she doesn’t know. “Of having something _in_ me.”

Barely a whisper, but clear enough between them. “That can be arranged,” is the first thought on Hermione’s mind.

He nods. “Yours too,” he promises, and Hermione falls forward into his arms. She sits on his lap, and they kiss each other more eagerly than she remembers ever doing. Ron guides his hard cock into her, and thrusts without being gentle, holding her by her hips, their teeth and lips clashing as they try to keep kissing and she pets him all over his chest. He comes when she pulls on his nipples and she comes after standing up, feet on either side of Ron’s legs, on the chair. Ron sucks on her clitoris, her wetness and his come dripping down his chin, until she can’t take it anymore. 

Then they go for a shower and get on with their days. There’s a lot to talk about, but they won’t get through it in one go anyway, might as well give it time.

Obviously, throughout the weeks, they continue on with their research. Shepherd recommends exercise and trying something new, and so they join a dance class. It makes Harry nearly piss himself when they bring it up, and Ginny is even worse, so after that they keep it between them.

Ron loves it.

He doesn’t get good at it any faster than Hermione, but the satisfaction it brings him to get something _right_ lights up his face. During their second lesson the instructor wants to show that you can be a leading partner even if you are the shorter one, and Ron is the only one in the class that is taller than he is. The blush on Ron’s face tells Hermione something, and the way he stares at the floor tells her he’s not ready for her to know. She can wait.

“I think there’s something you want to tell me,” she says, the next time she has a drop of Veritaserum. They have scheduled sex, like they’re supposed to, but want to try Shepherd’s fifth tip - roleplaying - and Veritaserum would make that harder, not easier. They’re sitting in their living room for a change. Dressed, on the sofa together (a higher frequency of casual touching is one of the tips also). She hadn’t meant to start with that. But such is Veritaserum. “Sorry,” she adds, just so he knows she didn’t mean to put him on the spot as much as she just has.

“I’d like to try,” Ron tells his hands. “And I think we should talk about it first, and I don’t know how it’d look like - but with another person. Three of us.”

“A man,” Hermione says, because she thinks that’s what he’s trying to say.

Ron looks up. “Not necessarily, if - if that’s… for you?”

“Yes,” Hermione finds, blinking a bit at her own admission, “I’d be fine with either.”

For the roleplaying that weekend they pretend Hermione is a plumber and Ron is home alone and they laugh and laugh and have mostly alright sex.

“We should do this again sometime,” Hermione says, when they’re lying on the bed together after, tired and sore. It was really fun even if she’d felt self-conscious a bit at the beginning.

“Maybe next time,” Ron says, and he blinks up at her, “my husband could watch.” She flushes red immediately. Hadn’t realized they were still playing. Nods, though.

Of course, _of course_ , Hermione thinks when she walks through Diagon Alley and sees a particular silhouette, broad shoulders, a waist less narrow than it was fifteen years ago.

“Of course,” Ron says, when she tells him. He opens up the paper, “do you think this is it?”

 _Quidditch Supplies_ the ad reads, then it has a few lines about quality and professionalism, and then a little address. Right on Diagon Alley. 

“We should,” Hermione says, knowing how loaded this is now, feeling that it’s true even if it’s not about that, they were friends once, and they are still aren’t they? They send each other Christmas cards. “We should invite him for dinner.”

“Of course,” Ron agrees. So they do.

They make it a group thing, because it’s nice, but also because it feels safer. One of the newer pubs, a side street of Diagon Alley so they can all get there easily after work. Couples, mostly, at this age. Neville has a new girlfriend and she comes along too. Somehow they’re a large table, twenty people or so. 

Hearty pubfood. And Viktor sits right between them. Gallantly spreads his attention between them and the other people that are there to see them. Tells Hermione he likes being able to see her face, with her hair like this, asks Ron if he’s grown taller. Winks when Ron blushes. 

They both tower over her, when they say goodbye. Ron is taller, but Viktor is broader. Tall for a Seeker, but then Seekers are very rarely tall. She finds she doesn’t mind at all, the way his arms wrap all the way around her when they hug. It’s nice to have seen each other, they don’t spend enough time with any of their friends.

That night, at home, they have surprisingly enthusiastic sex. 

“He sat with me at lunch today,” Hermione tells Ron, as she’s taking off her work clothes in front of the fire she just arrived through. She eats lunch in the park, with a book, whenever the weather permits. It is _so that_ she can be alone. But it was nice, to talk of what she’s been reading.

Ron’s face is still red when he sits back down, next to Hermione, after he’s gone to get them both a drink. It’s a silly charity event, but there’s dancing and they’re starting to enjoy dancing. “He said we dance well," he's breathless as he says it. "That we look beautiful together.”

The owl arrives as Hermione swallows her drop of Veritaserum. She reads it and then looks up at Ron, who looks as if he’s had at least two. “He wants to come over for dinner,” she says. 

Ron turns bright red. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” he tells her. It has to be true. “But I think I’d like it very much.” 

“Viktor,” Hermione says, twirling her wine a little in her glass. She’s curled up in her favourite chair, and full with Ron’s delicious dinner. “What made you come back to England?”

He blinks at her, languid on the sofa, looking as though he belongs here. The pale blue of it even makes his colouring stand out, as if they had chosen it for this purpose. Ron is sitting on the carpet, the wine or the fire making his blush appear a deep almost-purple. 

“There isn’t much in my country for me anymore,” he says, low and honest. “I do not… I do not play anymore. I no longer speak with my family. This is the only other language I know. I’d hoped to find friends here, and a new life.”

“How are you finding it?” Ron asks. 

“Friends,” he says, smiling a bit at them both. When he looks at Ron his hawk-like profile is outlined by the fire. “Perhaps a life. I feel... Hope.”

“He doesn’t seem as uncomfortable as he used to,” Ron says, that night, in bed.

“He frowns less,” Hermione agrees. “He’s gained a bit of weight too.”

“Makes sense.”

“Yeah,” Hermione settles under the covers a bit more, touches the tips of her feet against Ron’s legs. “He looks good.” Ron only hums a little.

It becomes - not regular - sort of common. For them to have dinner together. Viktor gets invited, people like him well enough, he makes some Bulgarian friends, joins the same amateur Quidditch team Harry is in.

“I can’t,” Ron laughs, his eyes shining and his head thrown back. They’re still at the table, halfway done with dinner. Just the three of them at Viktor’s flat. “I like Quidditch but I prefer to watch.”

He doesn’t mention the panic, the fear, the way it makes him dream of getting hit with curses instead of Bludgers. Maybe he isn’t thinking about it. Hermione spears another piece of beef. They had a salad first, loads of fresh tomatoes, and now they’re having a stew that clearly took hours. It’s delicious, his flat lovely, right above the shop, small but comfortable.

When she tries to concentrate on the conversation again she realizes Viktor is still gently needling Ron about joining the Quidditch league.

“You need to keep doing sports,” he says, his dark eyes bright in the light of the fire and the candles on the table.

“Oh but we do exercise,” Ron leans in to tell him. “We dance.”

Viktors mouth goes just a little slack, and Ron notices too, if she is reading the way his eyes flicker down correctly. “We do,” Hermione confirms, because she finds she wants to be a part of this. Wants to reward Ron’s bravery. “We’ve been taking lessons.”

“Do you,” Viktor turns a heavy urgent gaze to her. “Do you perform?”

She wants to say no, but Ron is faster. “Next Saturday,” he says. It’s their bloody Christmas recital. “You could - if you wanted to - ”

“Yes.”

On the day Hermione is too nervous about the dancing to worry about the rest. They’ve practiced, and they have a nice routine with the other couples. But it’s for people’s kids to come see, not for… Anyway. They change into Ron’s nice suit, and her nice dress, and when the lights are on and the music starts nothing else exists. They just dance. 

Afterwards, there is a dinner for the whole group. Some partners that aren’t dance partners tag along. They’re in their nice clothes, and Viktor looks stunning, and he gets invited along before either Ron or Hermione can ask.

“I - sorry?” He says, and he turns to them for permission.

“Yes,” Hermione says, with an eagerness that fills her to her toes. “Please do, it’ll be nice.” Ron’s hand twitches against her thigh.

They get tipsy, at the Lebanese restaurant they eat at. A large group, many different conversations. If Viktor is uncomfortable being around this many Muggles, it doesn’t show. He is a perfect gentleman, chats with everyone, never slips up. 

“Do you want to?” Ron whispers in her ear at some point. When he realizes she hasn’t been paying attention he adds: “To the club? They want to go dancing. I’m not tired, and it’s early enough that it won’t be too busy.”

“Let’s,” she says, looking right at Viktor. She turns in her seat to look at Ron. He nods at her, and she feels so proud, so grateful for him. Her fingers on his cheeks, she kisses him only once, but very deeply. When her eyes flutter open again both of them have flushed bright cheeks happy eager eyes.

Viktor - it turns out - is an excellent dancer. For what feels like hours, Hermione enjoys the feeling of his hands on her waist her arms her back. She misses how her hair used to sway with her and relishes in the burden that she doesn’t carry anymore. He looks at her like it brings him joy to do so. When she needs the bathroom she leans in. “Dance with him,” she urges. 

“Is that safe?” He frowns, like they’re not in _Soho_. She almost laughs. Just looks around. He follows her gaze, and blushes so beautifully it lights up his normally sallow skin. Obvious, even under the club lights. One peck to his cheek, and then she really does need to use the bathroom.

She sits down with a tall glass of something ice cold with no alcohol in it after, next to their instructor and some of the other people that aren’t currently dancing. They’re all looking at the dancefloor, and she looks too. Everyone looks beautiful when they’re dancing, but Ron and Viktor are the most beautiful. They look into each other's eyes like they would rather be alone, they move with the music as if it’s got them strung up like a marionette. It’s inevitable, it’s effortless. The way Viktor leads, and spins Ron around, and only needs one strong arm to reach all the way around his waist makes a little bubble of something that feels like jealousy rise in her chest. But then Ron smiles, so happy, so bright, and she can’t help but return it. Even if he isn’t looking at her.

The instructor gently bumps his shoulder into hers, and she looks up. Worries what makes his smile so soft, what he’s going to say.

“You’re very lucky.” And she is, so she nods to tell him.

“It’s very new,” she admits, feeling giddy and excited. “I’m looking forward to seeing where it’ll go.”

“Thank you for inviting me,” Viktor mumbles, earnest and somber, when they say goodnight. 

“I had a very good time,” Hermione promises. She wraps her arms around his waist and feels him soften even under his thick coat. They’re all swaying on their feet a little and she knows she shouldn’t and Viktor’s leaving to go to his grandma’s for Christmas in the morning and they’d rather get this right so… “Goodnight.”

Ron is shy again, outside in the cold, but he leans in to Viktor’s hug goodbye, and then they Apparate home.

The next day, of course, is awful. They couldn’t sleep from the noise and the impressions and all the flashing lights, and so when they finally get out of bed at one in the afternoon they just migrate to the floor in front of the fire. Ron gets them some food, and lies on the sofa. They barely say a word until Hermione has almost fallen asleep again. When it’s already dark outside and they’ll have work in the morning they should be thinking about.

“Was this really stupid?” Ron muses, and Hermione hauls herself to her feet and lies on top of him on the sofa. He smells like laundry powder and clean body, and they fit so neatly like this. 

“Maybe,” Hermione says, because she doesn’t want to lie. “It feels worth it though, to me.” Maybe trying is always stupid, she thinks a bit later, Ron’s hand idly on her back. They’ll find out.

When they’re getting ready for bed Hermione realizes she’s spent the whole day thinking about only one thing. She spits out her toothpaste and meets Ron’s eyes in the mirror. Doesn’t need Veritaserum when she’s feeling brave and knows what she wants. “You should go on a date with him.” Ron flushes and moves his jaw, he looks upset. “No?”

“It’s… I dreamed of this you know?” He tries very hard to explain, turns to look at Hermione properly. “Him seeing me.”

“I know,” she frowns. “I’ve known since fourth year.” His face turns to more upset and maybe that was indelicate of her? She never knows why other people get so bothered by things that are just true but Ron doesn’t usually get mad about it. “Should I stop talking?” She asks to be sure.

“No,” he says, “it’s just.” A deep sigh. “Lots of feelings I’m sorting through.”

That’s alright, Hermione thinks, as she takes a sip of water and washes her face. “Well, anyway,” she decides when she’d dried off and ready to go. “If you want it we’ll make it happen.”

There’s a package waiting by the door of their flat when they get back from pre-Christmas with her mum. It’s such a mess with families and new families these days and Hermione is always busy, but it’s nice to see her before she goes on holiday. She flushes immediately, and Ron doesn’t notice until he’s holding the door open for her to come in.

“What’s that then?” He asks, probably expecting it to be a book.

In the bedroom, after she’s made both of them shower, the harness she’s been unleashing Charms on for weeks now straps itself up the second she steps into it. Then she opens the box, and holds it out to Ron, who is already panting from just the sight of the harness. 

She’s bought three, and he weighs them all carefully before selecting the smallest one. “For - for now,” he says. It earns him a little peck on the nose and more lube on Hermione’s fingers until two slide in and out of him easily, and he groans with proper eagerness. He holds himself open, worried, when she coats the whole length between her legs in the best lube she could find that wouldn’t damage it.

“Deep breath in,” she says, like the books tell her to. “And slowly out.”

His erection flags, still full but not standing up quite as proudly. “No don’t,” he says when she reaches out to touch him. “Keep going.” 

She leans forward a little to sweep her least-sticky fingertips over his chest, and he arches into it with a moan. It pushes the dildo in further, and his cock leaks against his stomach. “Talk to me?”

“Mm,” says Ron. Shaking his head. “Overwhelming. My skin. Ah.”

He takes such deliberate breaths. His chest is splotchy-red and pale. When she scratches gentle nails down his front he sobs and writhes. It’s overwhelming for her too, to witness such pleasure. 

“You’re doing so good,” she promises, and he whines. “You’re taking it so well.” It’s true, she’s all the way in now. An experimental roll of her hips has him gripping at the sheets, his cock twitching and dripping. “Can I touch you?” She asks.

His eyes fly open. “Can we try just like this?” And _yes_ , obviously, she grins instead of answering. Speeds up just a bit and watches him lose himself. “Oh,” he says, and she’s never seen this before, never seen him like this. Never heard him say: “If you, angle it, yessssss.”

“Tell me what to do,” her muscles are already protesting as she tries to stick to a rhythm and she’s grateful for the dancing they’ve been doing. Wants this to work.

It takes a long time, but he does tell her what to do, and she gets to watch as if it’s happening to someone else, as if it wasn’t caused by her. His balls tight, his cock bobbing with her thrusts, the way his stomach moves, the needy little pants. The way he almost doubles over and whines and cries and scrambles with his feet as his come paints his chest. Her favourite bit is the way he flutters when she withdraws. As if she’s changed the baseline with this, and he misses her now. 

Besides the visual experience, the dildo did nothing for her, its base hitting her wrong and not enough. She feels keyed up and on edge and maybe even a little bruised when she coaxes the straps loose and marvels at the marks they left on her skin. Ron is floppy and sated, but when she sits on his face he makes her come twice. Two fingers in her, and one from the other hand rubbing at her arse, as if he wants to pass on what he just experienced. 

When Ron is lying very still on the sofa, right after they get back from a few days at the Burrow, the Floo flares green. Hermione knows who it is before she sees his still snow-covered boot come through, and hushes him on through to the kitchen. Best not to wake Ron.

He looks so sheepish, with his duffle bag still in hand, Bulgarian snow on his coat and shoes. He must have come through immediately after his portkey arrived. She turns around to make him some ginger tea. “Sit,” she offers, and he perches on the edge of the little step ladder they keep in the kitchen. “How are you? How was it?”

“It was…” he shakes his head, mouth sad and weary. “Well, they’re family.”

The mug of tea steaming on the counter. Viktor still in his coat, risking coming through without an invitation just because he needed this. She places her hand on the side of his face, slides it around to his neck. Lets him lean against her. It’s good that they’ve been practicing with casual touching.

“Viktor,” she says, playing with the hair at the nape of his neck a little. “You should go on a date with him, dinner with candles, and dancing or a movie. Ask him to stay the night. He wants that.”

He frowns up at her and her fingers still. Was that bad? Viktor looks at her like he is trying to read something on her face. “What about you?” He asks, finally. She doesn’t know what he means. “Don’t you want to come?”

She feels herself flush. Hadn’t quite realized that that was an option. “Yea,” she whispers. “If - ”

“Of course,” he promises, presses a little kiss to her sternum, which is as high up as he can reach. 

“You want this, right?” She says, or asks, knowing it’s not hardly specific enough. “Properly?” She wanted to have a nice mature conversation with the three of them but finds she wants to keep the hurt from Ron, should the answer be no. Sighs when he nods, despite her useless phrasing, forehead against her collarbone. 

It’s all surprisingly easy, after that. Viktor makes soup, and Hermione helps. They wake Ron up with it, a tray of steaming bowls and toasted bread. “Viktor,” he says, surprise and excitement all over his face. He swings his legs off to the side and pats the sofa for Viktor to sit down, and melts right into it when Viktor greets him with a kiss. Hermione stands with her tray of soup and watches, bubbling over with joy. 

She’s showered already, so she cleans up with Viktor while Ron showers, and then lies down naked and turned on with Ron while Viktor showers. In no time at all Ron is lying between her legs, his hair still a little wet, kissing up and down her thighs. Viktor comes out of the shower looking unsure, and gets hard so fast it seems to make him dizzy. He drops the towel he’d wrapped around his waist and lies down next to Hermione to kiss her and play with her tits. 

She wants to tell him everything about Ron. What he likes and where doesn’t like to be touched. How he squirms when you kiss his ears. Bites her tongue and lets him speak for himself. Maybe she’ll learn something new. 

She does. She gets to lie back on the pillows and watch Ron’s face as he gets her good and wet, gentle little licks, trying not to hurt her even through the enthusiasm with which Viktor is holding him open, wriggling his tongue into him. When she’s close, he tells Viktor to stop for a second, and they both look at her as she comes, wide-eyed and awed, while her thighs clench calves ache shuddering release. Ron kisses her stomach all over, after, and she pushes him away with a smile.

“Keep going?” She tells Viktor. “Let me see?”

Ron makes a mess off the bed before he’s even come, before anything more than the first centimeter or so of Viktors tongue have made it inside of him. When they switch around to lie Viktor down, and she kisses him as Ron slowly, his muscles shaking in concentration, lowers himself onto Viktor’s purpling cock, her heart feels as full as it ever has in her life. She kneels behind Ron, pets his stomach and chest with her hands, and gets to watch Viktor pick up speed, slam up into Ron, and come with a growl, Ron taking himself in hand to follow almost immediately after. 

The bed is large enough for three people that like each other, but it turns out that it is a problem that there’s only one duvet. Hermione likes it tightly wrapped around herself, and so does Ron, and normally that’s alright but with another person between them it isn’t. In the middle of the night Hermione (toasty, comfortable) wakes up to see Viktor disappear out of their bedroom door, naked and tall and proud. She wants him not to go, wants to wake up next to him, but also doesn’t want to force this on him. 

He returns a few minutes later with what is probably his own duvet. The idea that he went through the Floo naked and without his wand for a duvet makes her grin, and she kisses him when he settles back down. Behind her this time, because Ron and her had gravitated closer together in his absence. 

“This ok?” She whispers, hand sweeping through the rough hair on his stomach. He hums into their kiss.

“I like the warmth of together and the… roaming hands,” he says, his accent more obvious now that he’s tired and comfortable. “It is my favourite thing.”

She swears a probably too-solemn oath to herself to remember that forever and to give it to him as often as possible, as he traces her spine up and down while Ron sniffles against her neck. It’s just right.

They only have two weeks before it’s time for Hermione to go to the annual Wizarding taxes conference in Vienna. Viktor laughs out loud when she says it, and Ron chuckles along. “If that’s what you want to call it,” Ron says. 

She rolls her eyes. As long as they don’t know what she’s actually doing it doesn’t matter that they know one thing she definitely isn’t.

Viktor has brought some pastries to have with their coffee, it’s a cold but sunny afternoon, so they’ve dragged the chairs over to the window. They’re just high up enough in their flat to see the little park by their building. It feels like maybe it will be spring soon, which is of course ridiculous.

“Anyway!” She says, smiling along with them. “If you want anything from Vienna let me know.”

“Actually,” Viktor sits down and props his ankle up on his knee, he’s wearing socks made by Molly for Ron, and they’re a bit big around the toes. “Those chocolate cakes, you know? In the box?”

“Sure,” Hermione answers, “yeah. Have you been?”

“I’ve been everywhere,” he grins, but it’s not so bright or happy as it was before. “I did professional Quidditch for almost a decade.”

“Probably didn’t get to see much then,” Ron yawns, steals the rest of Hermione’s pastry that she wasn’t going to finish anyway. “Gin never does.”

Viktor hums his agreement. “Got to eat a lot of food, though. And Vienna has nice sweet things.”

“I’ll get you some then,” she promises, and he smiles at her, blinks gratefully.

“Hey,” Ron says when Hermione is packing. He’s still in his pyjamas, doesn’t actually need to be anywhere for another hour or two. “What about - what about while you’re gone?”

She stills. Turns to face him. Thinks on how to describe exactly what she’s feeling. “I - I want you not to ask.” She wonders why for a minute. “Treat it like seeing Harry for dinner, or having lunch with a colleague. Tell me after, about everything that was and wasn’t nice.”

He nods like he understands. “You don’t want it to be the sort of thing I should ask permission for.”

“That’s it.” And it is. “If you’d be changing something about the apartment, I’d want you to ask permission first, or… Or something else that affects me.”

“This affects you,” Ron argues.

“Because you both affect me,” she answers. Steps closer for a kiss. It’s true.

“Same,” Ron says, before they get properly distracted. “The same - it goes for you too. Before I forget.”

She’d expected to want to stay a day and explore, but all the other delegates haven’t ever been to Vienna either and they end up doing plenty of sightseeing during lunch and in the evenings. It helps that the venue is so central. Which means that on Friday night she looks around her beautiful hotel room and aches for home. She packs in a second with a flick of her wand, and steps through the lobby Floo not ten minutes later. 

She comes home to a quiet apartment. Mostly quiet, she decided, when a low murmuring filters through the bedroom door. She sets her bag down and walks up to the door. Changes her mind, turns around to take her shoes and coat off by the front door. Walks back to the bedroom door.

She doesn’t want to interrupt something, but if they don’t know she’s here, they can’t ask her in either. She contemplates knocking, and then decides that she’ll just be very brave and kind and strong about it if they don’t want her there.

This door doesn’t creak, and before Viktor notices her, she gets a good look at what’s happening. Ron, on his hands and knees. Viktor, fucking him slow enough it makes her stomach clench in sympathy. The slow hand petting Ron’s sweaty back, how red his face is, how his cock leaks and swings.

Viktors eyes brighten when he sees Hermione, but his rhythm doesn’t falter. “You’ll keep your eyes closed, won’t you?” He whispers to Ron. Ron just whines. “That’s a good boy, you’re doing so well.”

Hermione steps closer. Let’s her cold hands run up Viktors sides, kisses him between his shoulder blades. 

“Do you want a blindfold?” Viktor asks, and Ron starts squirming.

“I can - I don’t need. I can be good,” he protests.

“Oh I don’t doubt it,” Viktor soothes. “You’re always so good, aren’t you. So good to me. I’m only asking sweetheart, I’m not doubting you.” Ron whines again, and his toes curl. “You’ll wait for me to come, won’t you?”

“Yesss,” Ron hisses, and Hermione starts to undress. She lays her clothes over a chair and finds Viktor the sleeping mask she keeps in her nightstand, as noiselessly as possible. Viktor hands it to Ron, who puts it on. “Thank you,” Ron sighs, his voice rough with gratitude and need.

“Now, sweetheart,” Viktor tells him, his hands still on Ron. “Do you think you could roll over without me needing to pull out of you?”

Ron hums. So clearly eager to please. He lies down slowly and carefully on his side first, lets Viktor steer him. Viktor never breaks his pace, and settles Ron’s feet against his chest. He motions for Hermione to sit above Ron’s head, by the wall the bed stands against, and she does. Then Viktor makes a rubbing motion in the direction of his own chest and Hermione leans in.

“Hello, love,” she says, and Ron grins bright and happy.

“ _Hermione_ ,” he croons. She puts her hands on his shoulders first, and then works her way down with featherlight fingers. 

“I’m home,” she whispers, and grins up at Viktor, who looks like it might be getting too much for him. With her nails she scratches Ron a bit harder, until he can’t keep still anymore, muscles jerking and stomach jumping, whining and panting.

“Vik,” Ron begs, “I need - I need.” Hermione kneels up, tries to play with his nipples and reach for him at the same time. “Smell so good,” Ron complains, and she can’t help but grin at Viktor.

Viktor holds his hand on her shoulder to give her balance, and the second she wraps her lips around the very tip of Ron’s cock, pinching his nipples still, rocking with Viktor’s pace, he tells Ron: “Now, baby. Now.” Ron comes like it was the words alone that did it, and Hermione laps it all up until he’s starting to jerk away. “Bit more,” Viktor tells her, and she obeys. He only speeds up a little, knowing his own edge like the back of his hand apparently, and as he pushes into Ron a little deeper, a little more wildly, Ron cries out and arches up again, twitches like he coming even if he isn’t all the way hard anymore. Hermione gets to watch Viktor come, his face his chest his stomach. She sees him slump after, and then straighten up again, like there is work yet to be done.

He draws away from Ron at the same time as Hermione, and she absent-mindedly continues to pet his chest while Viktor lets go of his legs and fetches a towel. Together they get Ron under the duvet, Hermione in between Viktor and him, a towel under him so he won’t have to get up just yet. 

“Don’t stop touching him,” Viktor says, and she agrees, even though she does take off his blindfold. “Do you need - ”

“No,” she really doesn’t. “Happy to be home.”

He shuffles closer, a bit shy until she takes his hand and wraps it around herself. Kisses the palm of it. He pets her slowly until she feels herself drift off, wanting to tell him he did all the hard work, he should be getting petted to sleep, and lacking the words.

She wakes up a few hours later, when it’s dark and cold except for the places she’s tangled up with Ron and Viktor at. When Ron untangles further, she gets colder, and she whines at him.

“Gotta pee,” he says, so she lets him go. He gets a glass of water too, and tosses the towel in the direction of the hamper. Then he settles back down. Viktor is breathing steadily at her back when Ron moves in to kiss her nose. “Happy to have you back,” he whispers.

“Me too,” she murmurs, sleepy still. “Sorry I didn’t ask before joining. Was it ok?”

“Yes,” he promises, “more than, actually. I trust you both to know what would really not work for me, and what needs asking.”

“Still,” she argues, more with herself.

He bumps his knee against her a little. “Hey,” he says, a smile in his voice, “at least I won’t be as sore tomorrow as I was after you ravaged me.”

She giggles at his tone. “I recall someone going _harder, harder,_ ” she points out, and Ron chuckles too. 

“We should tell Viktor,” Ron says when they’ve been quiet a bit, “that it’s all good. Wouldn’t want him to worry.”

“Viktor knows,” a sleepy voice rumbles from behind Hermione. Ron and Hermione both try not to laugh and fail, so she turns around and pulls Viktor in closer. Kisses his face. Ron reaches out over her to pet his side, which presses him all along Hermione’s back. It’s good, it’s perfect. “Can we sleep now?” 

“Sure,” Hermione promises, tugging him closer still and feeling something warm and bright stir in her chest when he bends his head and kisses a lazy line underneath her collarbones. “Sleep tight,” she tells him, and a bit of wriggling allows her to lean back for a kiss for Ron too.

“Do you think it’s too early to ask him if he’d like to be our boyfriend?” Hermione asks a week or so later. Viktor has been busy with work so they haven’t been seeing him much. 

“No?” Ron looks up from where he’s staring at their list of things to try to answer the question they’d been wondering about. “We can always ask.”

“Sure,” Hermione says. _But what if he says no?_ She knows Ron would understand and still can’t find a way to say it. He seems to notice that she’s working on something and opens his arms. When she’s flat against his chest she finds some courage. “What if he doesn’t want to, or if he only wants to be your boyfriend?”

“What?” Ron’s incredulity is flattering if not helpful. “What are you talking about? Have you not noticed how he looks at you? How he touches you like you’re something holy?”

And that’s a part of the problem too, isn’t it? Still too gentle. 

“We shouldn’t be having these conversations without him,” she decides, untangling, but she checks over her shoulder before throwing the powder into the Floo. He nods his ok.

“‘Mione?” Viktor looks up from where he’s sitting at his dinner table, surrounded by stacks of paper. He’s wearing actual reading glasses and Hermione forgot what she was going to say until he walks over and kneels in front of the fire. “Everything ok?”

“Yeah,” she promises. “Yeah, don’t worry. Just. Do you want to come over tonight?”

“Sure,” he smiles, “let me just finish this, yea? I’ll be an hour I think.”

Not five minutes later he steps through the Floo, no reading glasses unfortunately, his brow creased and cranky. “Can’t concentrate,” he grumbles.

“Sorry!” Hermione pipes up from the books she’s surrounded by at the same time that Ron shouts: “I’m in the kitchen!”

“What are you working on then?” Viktor walks around to Hermione and pecks her cheek, forgiveness granted. “The Great Book of Charming Ropes?” He reads out. It’s very obviously - from the picture on the front if nothing else - about bondage. Hermione hears herself laugh nervously.

Ron walks into the sitting room as she does, wiping his hands on his apron. “Who’s… oh. Yeah.” He leans into Viktor’s kiss hello and stands behind Hermione also. “Tell him about it,” he urges, and she nods. “I’ll just pop dinner in the oven and join you, don’t wait for me.”

Viktor sits down next to Hermione and she starts explaining the various books she’s reading, shows him the list Ron made, and watches his face go from a fond _you nerds_ to a scowl of utter confusion. He doesn’t say anything, and barely even looks at Ron when Ron sits down.

“Did she explain about Percy’s wedding?” He asks, and Hermione shakes no. “Should’ve started there,” Ron says, gently. One warm large hand on Viktor’s shoulder, the other on Hermione’s knee. “We saw all the couples around us, and started to wonder whether we were as happy as we could be, I suppose.”

“And so you tried…” Viktor picks up the list. “ _Casual touching_ , and _discussing needs_.”

“We started dancing,” Hermione adds.

“Scheduling time for each other,” Ron says.

“Me,” Viktor looks at both of them. And that’s not true. Hermione has no idea what to say to the hurt on his face, the way he seems to feel like he’s item #13 on that list, _something adventurous_ , because he isn’t and he couldn’t be and she wouldn’t ever want him to think that.

“We asked you here today because Hermione wanted to ask you if you’d be our boyfriend,” Ron says, warm and kind. Poor Viktor flushes. “If we’ve explained poorly, I’m very sorry. Please tell us if it’s not clear how we came to a point in our relationship that we could admit we might be open to another person joining us, and please don’t ever think you weren’t lightning when we’d been talking about a torch.”

Hermione takes his hand. Wants to say it’s ok if he only wants Ron and knows that’d be making it all about herself. “What does it mean - boyfriend?” He asks.

“Boyfriend is - ” Ron is frowning.

“No,” Viktor interrupts. “For you.”

It becomes a very long conversation, interrupted by shepherds pie at some point. Hermione tries to look for answers in the books and Ron and Viktor pull her back. “What do you think?” Ron urges. She doesn’t know. 

“Look,” says Viktor. “I am not saying I don’t want it, and I am not saying I think it’s impossible. I just think we should know where we all stand.”

“I want some fucking Veritaserum,” Hermione groans, and both Ron and Viktor stare at her. Her mouth twists. She shoots an apologetic look at Ron and tries to explain which results in Viktor raising his voice a little and her raising her voice a bit more and ends with Ron going _stop_.

“It’s safe, it is not legal, but we both agreed to it.” He tells Viktor. Then he turns to Hermione, “I’m happy to do it but this is a yes please for everyone or not at all and you know that too.”

He waits for them both to nod and then Viktor and Hermione sneak a grin at each other at the same time. Ron has folded his arms just like his mum does when she tries to bring order to chaos. Viktors eyes flick over to where the large picture of all the Weasleys hangs, taken at Harry’s wedding, with all of them looking a bit younger and a bit tipsy and Molly at the foreground telling everyone to stand still already. 

They take a break so Hermione can help Viktor with his tax forms, and Ron cleans up a bit around them as they work. “You know,” Viktor interrupts himself mid-sentence to say, as he looks at the piles of taxes next to the piles of books and notes. “You’re both big nerds.”

“You take that back,” Ron shouts from the next room, and he leans around the doorframe to lob some socks at Viktor's head. Viktor, of course, snatches them out of the air like he never stopped playing Quidditch, and Ron makes a face. “I forgot,” he admits with a laugh, and Hermione hopes Viktor knows the admission of love for what it is. 

Which brings her to her epiphany of the evening. “Boyfriend is whatever you want it to be,” she tells Viktor, very earnestly, only vaguely aware that she’s ruining the playful mood. “I want it to be what it has been for the past few weeks, but more is fine, and less is fine too. I just like you very much and want you to know and trust that.”

Viktor nods, and Ron steps into the room fully, pulls something out of his pocket and reaches out. A set of keys. “What she said,” he says, happy eyes, bright smile.

Viktor takes them and nods again, doesn’t look up. “Yeah,” his voice cracks a little, he rubs at his stubble nervously. “Yeah - that’s. Lets.”

Ron goes to bed not long after that because he has to get up early in the morning and leaves them both to the taxes with a kiss. It takes a bit longer, but they do manage to figure it out. As soon as they finish, Viktor picks Hermione up and carries her over to the fire, spreads her out on the carpet. “Is anyone going to walk in on us?” He asks as he pushes up her shirt, kisses her stomach.

“Floo is closed,” she pants, rolling around to get to the clasp of her bra. When she manages she sighs in relief. “Only - only the three of us at night.” The building has a public Floo anyway, if anyone needs them they can ring the doorbell.

“Mmm,” Viktor hums into her soft skin, holds her breasts together as he kisses her deeply. “Can you teach me those spells?” He murmurs into her mouth, and she laughs. 

“Sure.” Together they get her out of her shirt, and soon she is naked from the waist up. Viktor moves to the robes he is still wearing and she stops him. “I - can we try something?”

He nods, his hands stilling, and she works her way out of her trousers and panties too. Places his hands on her thighs and watches him trace her stretch marks with reverence as she feels herself get hotter and wetter. “What do you want?” He asks, gentle fingers on the soft crinkled skin of the back of her thighs.

“I want it harder,” she admits. “I want it to hurt and I want it to leave marks. I don’t care about being restrained and I swear I’ll tell you when to stop.”

His eyes are huge, when she looks up. Worried and shining and he licks his lips. Tries to say something. 

“Ask me whenever,” she promises. “I’ll tell you if it’s good, or not good, or if I want you to take a break. I _will_ tell you when to stop.” 

“As a punishment?” He asks, swallowing around something in his throat, and she shrugs. Hadn’t thought about that. 

“Maybe yeah,” she agrees, “but nothing about _me_ , you know? You can tell me you’ll spank me twice for every noise I make or something.” She’s said it a bit off hand but knows immediately she’d like that. The chance to provoke, to lure him into giving her more. He folds over a little, like he’s been hit, but she knows that look by now. Holds out her foot to test her theory. Hard as stone. She smirks. “What are you afraid of?”

“Of liking it,” Viktor tells her, very earnestly, and she can only shrug again.

“That makes two of us.”

He rolls her onto her front, and the scratching of his woollen robes against her skin makes her breath catch. She can’t see, but knows he’s staring at her. “Oh,” she remembers, lifting off a little. “Don’t pull my hair, and no calling me names.”

He kisses her between the shoulder blades. “Lie down, sweetheart.” He tells her, and she shivers. “I’ll take care of you.” With no warning at all he bites into her skin, not too hard, and still it makes her yelp. She tries to relax back down and finds it almost impossible, the anticipation making her whole body buzz. He moves on with his finger, traces her skin until he reaches her arse, which he slaps hard enough to make her cry out properly.

“Do you want Ron to wake up?” He asks, his voice dangerous and low. “Are you hoping he’ll hear you, and come find out what happened, only to realize that this is what you’ve wanted all along?” He slaps her other cheek and she bites down on it with everything she has. Can’t help but groan through it as the sting fades and shifts into pure heat. She feels - almost literally aglow. 

“Want to be quiet,” she decides. “Ron needs his - needs his sleep.”

“Is that so?” He hums, right by her ear, ruffling her hair with his breath and making goosebumps stand out all over. His accent sounds stronger now. “How about I give you some incentive to keep Ron in mind, mm?” She shivers against the carpet underneath her and his heat just above her. “Every time you can’t contain we double what’s left.”

It’s perfect, and Hermione arches into it, nearly off of her stomach onto hands and knees. A hand on her neck keeps her down and she almost can’t breathe with excitement, feels herself get wetter when Viktor spreads her legs and the cold air of the room hits her. 

“We’ll start…” Viktor seems to ponder it, traces her spine all the way down to where she must be literally dripping by now, without applying enough pressure for relief anywhere. “With three.”

Her hips twitch, and he waits just a breath longer than she had expected him to, then cracks down again on the first cheek. She nearly bites her tongue with the effort from trying not to cry out, and then when he hits her other cheek immediately after she can’t help herself. “F-fuck…” She hisses, definitely loud enough to count as noise. 

“Two left,” he says, sweetly, and the next one lands a little more to the side. She manages to stay quiet for the last one too, and then turns herself over, pulls up her knees and spreads her legs all the way, to expose herself. He stares at her like he is about to shift into some sort of beast. Like his eyes will roll back and he will sprout fur all over and his hands will grow into claws and - 

She places one of her hands over herself and slaps, three times, quickly after each other. Lets him see what it does to her, how it flushes her cheeks and quivers down her thighs. It’s his turn to hiss through his teeth and then he turns her over again, pulls down his trousers only far enough to get his cock out, by the feeling of hard buttons and cold zips against her skin. Pushes into her with no patience, no finesse, nothing gentle about it. “Good?” He demands, even as she’s clawing into the carpet.

“Excellent,” she promises, “grab my hips.”

He does, and then he grabs harder. It hurts, and she’ll be bruised in the morning and she’ll get to know for days that this is why her knees hurt, this is why her waistband makes her feel tender. She first notices how close she is to coming already by the way her calves and toes are starting to cramp, and only then notices how tight her stomach feels. How she is starting to quiver. How she wants to never stop this - never ever and then suddenly she’s coming, face pressed into the rough wool underneath her and Viktors hands tighten even further and he stutters and she feels so so so - full.

It’s almost - uncanny. How easy it is. They have dinner together most nights, at Ron and Hermione’s. Just whoever gets in first starts something up. Viktor brings flowers sometimes, and Ron does so much around the house, and when Hermione tells them she feels bad they both look at her like they thought she was smarter than that. It’s not the sort of look she’s used to getting. 

“You spent _four hours_ yesterday just playing with my hair,” Viktor says.

“I’ve seen you take a pain potion because you played with my nipples until your wrists hurt,” Ron adds.

Both of those things are true. She blushes. “So long as you’re not resenting me,” she admits. 

Viktor gives her a look. “Anyway about tomorrow, I have plans with the Bulgarian people,” he explains. She lets him talk, and leans in for a kiss from Ron. 

***

Ron presses his palms together and vows to himself - again - that he won’t run away from this. He’s asked Hermione to be the one to say it, she offered to let it be between the two of them, and he’s said yes. Ginny is off playing Quidditch, now is the time.

He hears the floors upstairs in Harry’s cottage creak and stares out the window where spring is going to come in soon. All the bulbs Harry has planted are starting to peek out of dark dead soil. 

“She’s been a bit ill,” Harry explains when he comes down the stairs holding a mostly-asleep Lily. He sits down with her on the sofa, near enough to Ron that he could touch her but he’d have to reach out. Lily barely stirs. 

“The boys are down?” Ron asks, leaning back.

“Yes,” the way Harry smiles when he talks about them, and the way he looks down at Lily with such tenderness. It makes something heavy settle in Ron’s throat. “James is a bit old for afternoon naps these days, but I think he likes that he gets to stay up a bit later if he does sleep.”

“I wanted to talk about something,” Ron says, after a deep breath in and a long breath out. “And I’d like to ask you to keep any questions for the end.”

“Alright,” Harry promises, a frown on his face. “Is it a whiskey sort of conversation?”

Ron huffs out a laugh - if only. “No. No I think I need to… just say it.” He’s been thinking of what might be the right words for weeks, possibly since the very beginning, and has had to come to the conclusion that they probably don’t exist. He starts with what he knows to be true. “I’m in love with Viktor Krum,” he says, not looking at Harry. “And so is Hermione, and Viktor is in love with us too.” Harry doesn’t say anything, so Ron starts to try and tell him _why_ , “it’s just that he’s so wonderful and we’ve been so amazed that he likes us both and it’s been going so well and just everything is good and it’s so important to me that I’d want you to know and I asked Hermione if I could be the one to - but of course she’s better at these things so if you’ve questions then - ”

“Ron,” Harry interrupts him, and Ron looks up. It’s harder to tell what Harry’s thinking these days, he finally seems to have found a way to not broadcast everything he feels the second he feels it. “If it - if it makes you happy.” He swallows and. “Then there’s nothing to explain.”

With a deep sigh Ron folds in on himself, lets his head rest on his knees for a second. When he looks up again he huffs out a shaky laugh. 

“Are you not - ” Harry struggles. “Worried? Or?”

“Jealous?” Ron waits for Harry to nod. “No,” he says. “When they look at each other they light up - I want that. For them and everyone I love.”

Harry pauses for a second and then bobs his head up and down, and Ron wants to ask. Knows Harry needs more time, normally. That it’ll come when he’s ready. They both look at Lily as she makes a noise, and Harry’s arms tighten around her a little, careful not to wake her up. Ron suddenly has a vision of Harry, long hair up in a messy bun, able to carry and nurse his own children, the way he’d radiate like Fleur did when she was pregnant. The way Ginny seemed to hate it, and hasn’t skipped a season since she was pregnant with James, carefully planning around Quidditch. 

“I think I get that,” Harry admits finally, still looking at Lily as if he’s hiding behind her. All his limbs still from endless jittering only when he’s holding his kids. Ron prays that they won’t hurt him too much when they stop wanting to sit on his lap and be carried everywhere. “Gin is - sorry. She’s your sister.”

“Tell me,” Ron urges. Knowing that there are some things you can’t share without becoming family, and that defeating a genocidal maniac is one of them.

“Different,” Harry says, finally. “Says that if I’m not jealous it means I don’t - I don’t love her like she loves me.”

Ron doesn’t quite know what to say but wants to soothe whatever is hurting Harry like this. “For what it’s worth,” Ron says, finally, because he’s come to realize a bit of this over the last months, “I don’t think that is true. I think love cannot be measured in kinds or magnitude.” Harry looks at him finally, he looks very tired and young and Ron wants to tell him to toss his wand to the side and punch someone on the nose. “I think it’s like pain in that way. When you have it you know, and when you don’t you know, but your memory plays tricks on you, and other people’s experience with how it comes and goes _can_ help. So we try so hard to communicate about it. But it’s only through experience with your own heart that you can try to estimate if and when it will get more or less.”

Harry stares at Lily and nods, looks like he wants to say something but shakes his head as if to clear it instead. 

“And we have to trust - choose to trust - that the world will keep turning regardless. That somehow it will be alright.”

“You’re wrong, you know,” Harry says then, looking at Ron with his thoughts finally clearly on his face. Fondness, and fear. “Hermione is fast, but she’s crap at explaining. You are much better at these things than she is.”

Ron can’t help but laugh. Feels so full of love. “At the risk of making a point that was already obvious. If it ends... that doesn’t mean it was never there and it won’t change a single thing about how you are loved.”

Lily fusses in Harry’s lap and checks the clock. “Making it all about me again,” Harry mumbles. “Sorry.” He looks up and stares at Ron and then grins fully, a real smile. “So tell me about it? Has this been since you were 14?”

“Shut up,” Ron laughs, knowing his ears are red and so is the rest of his face. “Feels like it sometimes. But he’s different, and so are we, and I know him now.”

“Yeah you do,” Harry laughs.

When James comes down the stairs, every bit a Potter from his hair to his knobbly knees, he crawls into Ron’s lap with a yawn. Harry stops talking for a second, and Ron changes the topic. Just Harry for now, they’d said.

***

“Was Harry ever…” Viktor’s nostrils flare, he seems annoyed at himself, “like this.” A hand motion. “Your third.”

“No.” Hermione says, looking at Ron who is lying on the sofa, staring at the ceiling. She’s not sure if he’s paying attention. “No, it was you and me, besides some kissing,” she tells Viktor, “then Ron and me, and then the three of us. And for Ron there was one girl before me.”

“Lavender,” Viktor nods, then he blushes as if he wasn’t supposed to know that. “Yes. For me it was not so.”

“I know,” Hermione tries to soothe. It really doesn’t matter.

“I was married,” Viktor says, out the window, like they should know that already.

“Excuse me what?” Hermione finds herself saying, too surprised to be polite about it. He turns around, sad eyes slumped shoulders.

“Two years, only.” He says. “She was very beautiful,” as if she no longer is anymore, Hermione feels her whole face fall. “I was not good to her - she went back to her mother and I paid her a lot of money. She married a doctor now, and I think she is much happier.”

Not dead then. “Viktor,” Hermione says, her voice all weird. What do you say to something like that? “I’m very sorry to hear that. I can’t believe there’s so much we don’t know about each other.”

Behind her, Ron rustles. Opens his arms and lets Viktor lie down on top of him when he shuffles over. “I think it’s nice,” Ron offers. “People always change and it’s a bad habit to imagine you’d be able to actually know someone. Hermione’s been surprising me a lot this last year, Harry too.”

Viktor hums into Ron’s collarbone. “She wanted children,” he says, “and a nice big house. And for us to go to church together on Sundays. And to pray for God to help me overcome my sinful nature.”

Hermione walks away then, goes to do dishes and then reads a book in the bedroom, curled up in the chair she loves. She kind of wants a cat and she definitely doesn’t want to make Viktor feel worse with her own feelings about all that.

***

They had told him it was alright, if he wanted to tell. That it was up to him, and they would not mind either way, and he’d almost laughed. But they were so earnest, and he was going to miss them terribly. So he just kissed them and let their last night for a week or so be about the goodbye.

“Grandmother,” he finds himself saying, can’t help but tell her the only thing that is on his mind these days, twisting his hands together between his knees, a bit too far away from her kitchen table ever since he got too tall for it. “I am in love.”

“Aha,” she cooes, “is that why you never visit your old grandmother anymore?”

“I live in England now,” he says, it’s impossible not to smile at her, “it’s a long trip.”

“That is what they all say. Now tell me about your love.”

He has a picture, from New Year’s Eve, when it was fresh and bubbly and fragile like champagne and they’d gone out anyway, had a stranger take a photo with what Hermione calls a phone but as far as Viktor knows has never used for calling. It doesn’t move, she’d had it printed by Muggles, and he doesn’t go anywhere without it. Because he leans his head against Ron’s shoulder and Hermione, in front of them, hangs on to his arm around her waist. There are literal fireworks all around, and they grin like it’s the start of a new world. 

“You’re nuts,” his grandmother scolds. He knows, and has no idea what she’s picked out that he’s particularly nuts for. “Your children won’t even look like you.” At that he laughs - and she grins at him too, she knows him better than that. “Vitusha,” she says, and he looks away so she won’t see how he’s tearing up. “Take good care of yourself, I won’t always be around to do it for you.”

At night, in the bed he is too tall for, at the top of the old creaky house, covered in blankets that were made with such an overabundance of love that they are warm to the touch from it, he writes a letter. _Dear Ron & Hermione _, it starts. He fills it with sentimental things he doesn’t have the words to express, certainly not in English, and decides one paragraph in that he’ll never send this. The words come easier after that. He misses Flooing into a warm bright apartment with wooden floors and comfort all around, misses the way their faces light up when they see him. Has missed being looked at like that, even if he’s sure no one has ever seen him like they do. He doesn’t sleep well, feels tired and old, and overthinks until he needs to get up to use the bathroom. Wishes he were home.

He knows, intellectually, that these rituals are older than Christianity, that people who lived in these forests and villages millennia before celebrated the return of light after the long dark winter. 

When it’s dark in the church, though, and late at night, and spring has been obvious everywhere for weeks, and the single candle is lit, it feels like something wholly new. Something exciting and fragile and fresh. The rising, the resurrection, different than it was before. 

He missed the beginning of Lent, of course, had not taken the opportunity to ask his family and the other churchgoers for forgiveness. Iva had moved back to her own town, after. The remarriage acceptable only because of how grievous his crimes against her had been. His refusal to attend Church, his refusal to admit to or atone for his sins. His not wanting to bring children into what had become so painful so fast. 

When he’d made the decision to come only for the end of Holy Week and Easter, he had made that decision easily. If three years of asking for forgiveness had not changed a thing, what would a fourth do? 

Now it feels like a mistake, like he is an intruder on the feast after the long fast they survived together, unworthy of the spoils he did not earn. 

When he is due to leave his grandmother wards him for the journey with spells older than the name of his country, and it makes Viktor feel connected to the earth. She blesses him, too, and although no one has come to see him off, there is no pictures taken, no hands shaken, no wishing him the very best, at least no one was rude to him during this visit. He longs to be home and loved fully, and kisses his grandmother goodbye. Lets the portkey take him away. 

***

Hermione and Ron spent the whole week trying to get used to not having Viktor there, and they failed miserably. “We used to be fine,” Ron complains on the third day.

“Let’s do something,” Hermione offers, they could go out for a drink, or go dancing, or hang out with Harry and his kids.

Ron groans, “it’s late though.” He’s right, it’ll be time for bed in a bit.

“A bath?” She suggests, and he turns to squint at her. Shrugs. So she sets the taps running, lines up little candles, finds a bath bomb somewhere behind everything else in a cupboard. It’s dusty.

“Is that a WWW one?” Ron asks, already getting out of his clothes and dropping them into the hamper.

“Yeah,” Hermione turns it around, tries to read the faded packaging. “The Chinese Fireball,” she reads out, feeling more than a little dubious.

“No that one is nice,” Ron says, sliding into the hot water carefully. “Climb in, I’ll show you.”

Hermione taps his back and sits down behind him, kisses his startled smile. “Go on then,” she offers, holding the box open for Ron. As soon as he touches it, the bath bomb starts fizzing a little. Sizzling almost. He plops it into the bath and she pushes him to one side so she can look around him. It smells like incense a bit, deeply fragrant. The red ball bobs up to the waterline, and then floats above it a little, showing a golden colour under the red. As the red drips and fizzes away totally, the gold cracks open and falls down into the water again, leaving the whole bath bubbling as if it’s boiling, red and gold around them. They can’t help but laugh, delighted by the spectacle, playing with the bubbles with their hands and toes until finally the water settles down again, only the smell and the colour of the bathwater remaining off the bomb.

“Oh we should have done this ages ago,” Hermione decides, leaning back a bit, helping Ron settle against her. With gentle hands she spreads the warm water over his chest, using a cupped palm to pour some over his shoulders. He melts into it, knees bent awkwardly in their one-person tub. She kisses his ear.

“Should get a bigger bath,” he sighs. She thinks of how cold his knees must be, but he continues with: “Imagine how much he’d love the one with little butterflies.”

It gets unbearable about two hours after Viktor was supposed to arrive by portkey. Not that they’d _said_ they’d meet up immediately after, of course. 

“Can we just go there?” Hermione wonders, rubbing at her forehead. Ron looks up from where he’s making a second cake.

“Sure,” he says, dropping the ladle and going to untie his apron. Hermione can’t help but laugh. “Or,” he says, eyes crinkling as he realizes, “or I’ll get this in the oven first.”

“Maybe,” she says, with a kiss. 

Ten minutes later she goes through the Floo first. She steps out of the way so Ron will have space, and calls out for Viktor. She’s almost at the bedroom door when it opens. He has a towel around his waist, his hair is dripping, the hair on his chest and arms and legs is wet enough that it’s lying flat against him. 

“I’m sorry,” she offers, “you can finish showering.” He opens his arms to her, sniffles suspiciously, and smells just like he’s supposed to. She doesn’t mind one bit that she’ll get her clothes wet. “Glad you’re home,” she promises. “Glad to have you home.”

Ron steps in close too, kisses Viktor with a warmth and fondness Hermione wishes the two of them could see. “Hey,” he offers. No eloquence but great affection. 

They all stumble into the bedroom together, collapsing onto the bed. Hermione opens Viktor’s towel and sits between his legs, rubbing up and down. Ron sits behind Viktor, still dressed, and leans both of them against the wall. Pets his arms his chest his face. His beard has grown, not just stubble anymore. Viktor squirms.

“Tell me,” Hermione offers, wanting him to have everything he can imagine and more. She imagines he’ll tell her he’s cold, that he’d rather not lie back and be taken care of tonight, that he needs her to do something with her hands her mouth, anything.

She did not expect him to look at her, dark eyes wide with something, and say: “Do you still have the… the potions?”

“Yes,” Ron says, kissing his shoulder as he runs fingers through Viktor’s hair. “For tonight or for another day?”

“Another day,” Viktor decides, and Hermione kisses his stomach. Licks at his balls. Takes his cock into her mouth and watches him try to fight it. 

She lets go with a pop. “I want you to fuck my face,” she says. “I will tap out if it’s too much.”

His penis jerks as she says it, Viktor’s stomach clenches, and he looks up at Ron first. “Her face,” Ron says, gently but with a laugh. Hermione appreciates him letting her make her own decisions on this very much but wants something else to be even more obvious. She unbuttons her trousers and slips in a hand, before taking the head of Viktors penis into her mouth. She doesn’t do anything with it, but uses her free hand to take one of his and put it on her head. Looks up at him.

Reluctantly, and slowly at first, he cups her face with two hands and holds her in place as he rolls his hips, pushing himself in and out. It feels good, the slide of it, the way she starts to drool and can’t stop herself. She moves closer and his rhythm pushes her mons against her hand. Moans. 

“Hermione,” he groans, his fingers tightening, and she looks up at him, and Ron too. Ron is still petting Viktor, and she puts a hand on the thigh next to her face so she can tell Viktor if he needs to slow down. Their faces are red, their eyes are bright, they’re looking at her. She feels gorgeous and seen.

When he comes he is so far down her throat that she can’t swallow, and she has to pull away a little and still doesn’t manage. It’s filthy but good and how he looks at her afterwards, how they both kiss her, she’d do anything for that.

They go out for dinner with just the three of them for the first time for Viktor’s birthday. “Should have done this before,” Hermione decides when he holds the chair out for her and helps her sit. Ron agrees with a hum but Viktor frowns. “What?” She asks him.

“People will know,” he says. 

“Is that why we’re at a Muggle restaurant?” Ron asks, his eyes a little sharp.

Viktor ducks his head a little. “I really did feel like Indian food.”

Hermione tries to let it go but she’s never been very good at that. “I categorically refuse to hide.”

“Hermione,” Ron says, not a warning because he wouldn’t, but still.

“I know it’s supposed to be nice and his birthday and I want that!” She argues. “But all the nice gifts in the world won’t mean a thing if we can’t actually enjoy them.”

“It’s ok,” Viktor says, stopping Ron before Ron can say anything back. “We’re having nice Indian food in a place where there is not so much pressure because we will not be recognized.” He looks at her intently. Not the only time they’re doing this, just the first.

“Alright,” she agrees. Then, because she wants to make this as nice as possible: “So who will share a samosa platter with me?”

***

Jean Thompson will never get used to how the flat resists being found. She feels in her stomach that she’s forgotten something, that she shouldn’t be there, that she really needs the bathroom, and then suddenly it all fades. Number 22-78, it says on the door, and she spots Albert on the steps already. Calls out for him.

“Hello,” he tells her, as she grins up at him. “No rush, we’re a bit early.”

“Hello too,” she answers. “I’m always worried that this time the flat will win. It looks so ordinary but - ”

“I’m exactly the same,” Albert laughs, and they walk up the stairs to the fourth floor together. Hermione’s door has a little blue sign next to it ‘64 - Ron and Hermione,’ it reads. She knocks. 

“Hey mum!” Hermione says, as she opens the door and kisses her on the cheek. “Didn’t know you were here already. Hello dad, glad you could both make it.”

“Of course,” Albert says. Jean walks on to the sitting room, hoping to greet Ron too, and then opens the door to the kitchen. Ron is there, but so is a very broad dark-haired man, and they are doing some extremely enthusiastic kissing. 

Jean turns around automatically, to check where Albert and Hermione are, and as it turns out - Hermione is right behind her. Bright red cheeks. When she turns back Ron and tall dark and broader-than-most-doorposts are blushing at her too. “Hello Ron,” she says, having to stand on her toes to kiss his cheek even when he bends down. She holds out her hand to the stranger. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“I’m - I’m Viktor,” he says, surprisingly shy-sounding. He has a hard to place accent. “It’s a pleasure to meet you too, Mrs. - ” A terrified glance over her shoulder in the direction of Hermione. 

“Thompson, Dr. Thompson actually,” she says. “But do call me Jean.”

He swallows. “Jean.” Albert has walked up too, and he shakes Viktor’s hand, claps Ron on the shoulder as he shakes his. 

“Good to see you,” Albert says, and he means it. He’s always liked Ron and the way he looks at Hermione like she hung the stars and invented the moon. “Now what are you making us?”

“Mum,” Hermione hisses behind her, and Jean turns around, more amused than she has been in ages. 

“He’ll stay for dinner, won’t he?” She asks, loud enough that the people behind her in the kitchen will hear. She turns back, “won’t you, Viktor?” Just to be sure.

“Sure,” Hermione says, making eye contact with him. “If you - if you can?”

He can. Hermione sets them up in front of the fire with a glass of wine and some olives, and she unwraps her presents the same way she’s always done, as if the paper is as precious as what’s inside. “Happy birthday sweetheart,” her dad tells her when she smiles down at this year's member’s pass for the British Museum. 

“Thanks, dad,” she says. Then she looks up at her mum.

“Let me know if you’d like to work on it together, or if you need me to show you how to get started,” she says, handing over her gift. Hermione’s grin gets impossibly wide when the beautiful wine red wool comes out. “Enough for two scarves or a sweater, and the instructions for both are in there,” Jean says. She bites down on the urge to say that the wool is plenty for three pairs of socks, if she’d rather that.

“Thanks, mum,” Hermione says. “I can’t wait to give it a go.”

Ron has made a delicious pie, vegetarian for Hermione, with a salad on the side that he admits, cheeks red, Viktor made. Albert is happy as a clam with his food, and it really is delicious, but Jean is trying to figure out whose feet are tangled together under the table. 

“You’re off soon, aren’t you?” Hermione asks her dad, and he chats happily about the holiday he’s booked with his wife and her youngest. 

Jean doesn’t care much about all that so she focuses her attention on Viktor. “What is it you do, Viktor?” She asks, and he stammers a lot in the beginning but slowly gathers steam when he realizes she understands enough about the Wizarding world to know what Quidditch is. “Like Harry?” She asks, when he tells her he used to play Seeker, and that’s the first time that Ron cuts in.

“But for the national team of Bulgaria,” Ron says, not without pride. “So a lot better than Harry.”

Viktor mumbles something and that’s when Jean remembers the ball Hermione had worn a dress for, when she was maybe fifteen. How she hadn’t gone with Ron or Harry, but had written about a boy that participated in a tournament at her school. Bulgarian. 

She turns to Hermione in a flash. “Have you been hiding this poor boy for _over a decade_?” She asks, because if they’ve been three all this time, then where have they been keeping him?

“No,” Hermione says, “no. We - we wouldn’t. We recently reconnected.”

“Christmas,” says Ron. Not a year yet. Jean sighs. 

“Sorry,” she tells Albert and Hermione, “keep going.” Then she turns back to Viktor. “And is this your first time running a business? How are you finding it?”

They talk quite comfortably about the clinic she still runs with Albert, and he laughs when she tells him she insisted they change the name to Granger and Thompson after the divorce. It’s a nice laugh, even if he’s still a bit shy. His eyes brighten, and he doesn’t look so sour and maltreated as he did before he settled in a little. “Are you…” He searches for words with a large frown and his head bowed. “For after? When you stop working.” He turns to Ron.

“Retirement?” Ron suggests.

“Yes,” Viktor sits up a little, tastes the word. “Retirement. Is it ok? With your own business here?”

“Sure,” Jean smiles. “I’m sure it’s different for you with the Magical laws, but the country has a system for it. Albert and I are not worried, but we’re enjoying the work still and will keep going as long as that is true.”

“It is very nice,” Viktor says, looking at them both. “That you are comfortable with each other.”

“It is,” she agrees, looking at her family. It really is.

When she’s being seen off, Albert having gone already to catch his bus, she taps on the little sign next to the door. “Will you be adding a name to this?” 

“Not sure,” Hermione shuffles a bit. “We haven’t talked it all through yet. Not a lot of people know.”

“Glad to know before the papers do,” Jean jokes, “what was it? Illicit triplets with the Saviour?” She’d tried for years to sort through the Prophet, to make sense of it, and had given up around Hermione’s fifth year. Right on time, probably, considering all what happened after.

Hermione laughs with her, then stands up a little taller. “How did you even figure it out? Is it so obvious?”

“They were pretty far down each others throats,” Jean reminds her. “But I suppose I could have come to a whole host of conclusions from that.” Hermione bobs her head yes. “Honey, I’ve seen a lot. I’ve tried plenty, especially since your father and I got divorced, and - ” Hermione makes a face, and they both laugh. “Don’t ask then! If you don’t want to know.”

“No I get it,” Hermione promises. “You just know Ron and me, and know how to pay attention to us.” That sums it up alright. “Do you think dad knows?” 

Jean shrugs at that. “I’m not sure, but I’m happy to talk to him if you’d like.” She means it, but Hermione shakes no. Albert probably noticed, he’s not unobservant, but he won’t have any feelings about it until he talks to his wife about it. And thank god that is no longer her.

“Sweetheart,” she says before she turns around, “all this love, it’s… it’s love. I’m sorry I’ve nothing else to tell you. I’m so very proud of you for trying to work it all out.”

Hermione gives her one last hug, and then they say good night.

***

The days are getting noticeably shorter again, and Hermione lights candles all around to keep the gloom of almost-winter out. Spreads all her research out on the carpet in front of the fire for one last look before she archives it. Has one of the top three epiphanies of her life as she does it.

“Sit,” she tells Viktor, when he comes in through the Floo after he’s closed up the shop. It’s doing well, better than he’d hoped considering it’s now cold and wet and not yet Christmas. He laughs at her and kisses her, then goes to hang his coat and make some tea. But then he does sit down. She talks him through everything, the conversation they had at Percy’s wedding, the books she’d read after, all the notes, all the ideas, all the things they’d tried. 

“Hermione,” he says after a while, and when she looks up at him she realizes he’s not following. Frowning and a little pale. “Could we…”

“Yes!” She hadn’t meant to go on like this, doesn’t want him to be overwhelmed at all, “Merlin I’m so sorry, you had a full day at work, I should have - ” He interrupts her with a kiss. Sits down behind her instead of on the sofa and wraps her up. “I should be the one comforting you,” she mumbles.

“Shhh,” he says, sounding like he might smile, “you are.” She relaxes into it, and he sways back and forth a little. It’s soothing, so she lets him. Tries to think of a way to summarize everything she’s thinking in one sentence. 

“Ron and I realized that we were not as keen on the standard markers of what makes a good relationship back then,” she says. “And then we tried to figure out if we weren’t missing out, I suppose. But what we have now, with the three of us, it’s less standard than what Ron and I had.”

“What you have, surely?” Viktor interrupts. It’s a good question.

“We’re not the same,” she answers, after thinking it over. She looks up at him. “You have changed us, and we were fine before you but we would not be fine without you.”

It’s true and yet Viktor looks like he might cry. He closes his eyes as if he’s hurting, and hugs Hermione tighter to himself. She settles in. The swaying picks up again. She would be whole still, without Ron or Viktor or both of them. But she isn’t interested in knowing what that would be like. 

The next sentence burns on her tongue and even if she isn’t sure if she should speak yet, she does. “I think this list is useful again,” she says, “that we can use it to talk about what we want and need.”

“Marriage, babies, living together, sex,” Viktor reads out, leaning off to the side a little to be able to see. “These are your measures?”

“Finances, chores,” Hermione reads out. They’ve fought about dishes more than once. “Things Ron and I didn’t consider because they were so normal to us, like being open and public about what we mean to each other.”

“You are ok to add to the list?” Viktor asks. She nods.

“Of course,” she promises, “it’s just a place to start.”

“I like it as a place to start,” Viktor admits then. And that’s enough for now. 

It takes another week before they all have time, but then they’re sitting at Viktor’s kitchen table with notes and lists all around, and a steaming pot of tea in the middle. Ron looks at Hermione intently.

“Please don’t think that I am reluctant to have this conversation,” he starts, and her stomach feels weird and hollow. “But why is this so important to you?”

It’s important because this is the only way to find out what they’re all thinking, Hermione thinks, but that’s not what Ron asked. She frowns at the table, accepts the steaming mug that Viktor hands her. It’s important to Hermione because she wants to know how Ron and Viktor feel about her, and about each other, and about the relationship. Because she cares deeply and she wants it to work. “I’m worried,” she admits, “that it’s too easy. That something will happen and we won’t know how to deal with it because we never talked about what we want, not now but later.”

“You’d prefer to feel prepared?” Ron asks, and she nods. She looks at him, his red hair, his blue eyes, all his well-loved freckles. 

“I love you very much,” she tells him, earnestly because she feels it in her soul. He is all warmth. “And you too,” she tells Viktor, who has been frowning for a while. 

“Me too,” he says, intense but gentle. 

“It’s not enough though,” she says, feels it prickle on her skin. And they both know that as well as she does. 

Ron takes a deep breath. “Viktor, would you like to get married?”

“I think I would like to try your potion now,” Viktor answers, with a little laugh.

Ron pulls the phial out, and they each take a drop before Viktor does, but Viktor is the first to say anything.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” he says.

“Should we stop?” Hermione asks, before she realizes the ambiguity of the question.

“No,” he answers, before she can correct herself. “We should talk about this. I just don’t want to.”

“How come?” Ron tries.

“It is - so personal,” he makes a face, “I do not want to get married again, and I don’t want children or to share a house anytime soon. But I am not like Hermione - I worry about today as well as tomorrow. Are you sleeping with other people too? Do we share enough to stay… entertained or - or not bored? When do you want time alone? Am I overstaying how long you want me there?”

“Viktor,” Hermione interrupts him, before he spills every anxiety he has ever felt and has to deal with that in the morning. “We are not sleeping with other people, we have so much in common, I can’t speak for Ron here but I feel comfortable around you, I never want you to leave.”

“Yes,” Ron agrees. He looks at Viktor with serious eyes, like he’s trying to figure something out. “Are you sad?”

Viktor covers his face with his hands, bends down, sobs like it’s being torn out of him. Hermione has never seen him like this, overcome so completely, and she doesn’t know what to do, but she does know what she wants. Ron and her move at the same time, sit as close as they can, and wrap him up as he tries to stop, tries to apologize.

“It’s ok,” Hermione says, “I can’t lie right now so you know it’s true.”

A little laugh and then a fresh flood of tears. “It - doesn’t. It doesn’t feel ok,” Viktor finally manages, and that has to be the truth too.

They help him to bed, out of his clothes, under the covers. Nestled together like those brackets in the math problems Hermione used to have to work through. He cries himself tired, and then tries to explain and apologize. 

“The old pain,” Ron says from somewhere behind her, and Hermione feels Viktor nod against her neck. Shivvers. He pulls the sheets up over her so she won’t get cold and the sudden rush of affection takes her breath away, like a living thing inside of her, pushing against her lungs. She turns around in his arms, kisses his wet salty face. 

“You’re so loved,” she promises. He bites down on his lip but her hand is against his stomach and she feels it clench. “What do you want right now?” _I’ll give you anything_ , she thinks, but she doesn’t say it so the Veritaserum must be wearing off.

“Sleep is ok,” Ron offers, “but we can talk about you or one of us or something unrelated too. It can be funny or... a story from the past.”

Viktor thinks on it, long and hard. “Funny,” he decides, finally. And so they tell him about the first flat they’d lived in together, with Harry who was so run down by old stale grief and all his fresh wounds that he couldn’t bear the thought of touching his money, and Neville who was temporarily disowned for one thing or another. So they’d rented a shit place in a shit part of London and they’d laughed about how shit it was to live off of their meager part-time incomes as they were still trying to get their NEWTs and recover and buy new clothes for the first time in years. Until one day they came home from the Ministry to find a pigeon sitting on their sofa, and their whole flat covered in literal bird shit and they’d spent hours trying to catch the vile monster and throw it out of the window and also clean before they remembered their wands. 

Viktor cackles at the part where Neville got hit and they all rushed over to check on him and while they were doing that the pigeon decided all by itself that it was time to leave. “He just flapped away,” Ron says, his voice as grave as it always is when they get to this part of the story, and Hermione rolls around laughing. 

It helps.

"We'll be ok," Ron promises, much later. Half-asleep. Viktor hums. Hermione kisses them both. They will be.


End file.
